Cocedal, a French based qualitative research specialist, has decided to sign up with DigitalMR to use its eCommunity platform and social media research services.

eCommunity is a software platform that will now allow organisations in France to recruit private online communities or community panels for the purposes of marketing research, co-creation, customer activation and customer advocacy.

The platform is multilingual and equipped with a range of useful marketing research tools, most of which have been especially designed by DigitalMR’s researchers and software engineers in order to bring innovation and efficiency to the marketing research process. Some of the available tools that enable engagement with the community members are: Moderated Bulletin Board Discussions (enabling the use of rich media), Video and Photo Diaries for ethnography, Chat Group Discussions, Online Surveys and Polls.

Cocedal Conseil owns a beauty panel with about 3000 women in France which is used for marketing research purposes. The panel will now evolve to a fully-fledged online community for higher engagement and less churn. In addition to using the larger community for ad-hoc research for its clients, the community will be made available to companies or brands to consider recruiting their own private online communities for co-creation and insights.

About the win, DigitalMR’s CEO - Michalis Michael - said: “I am excited about this announcement for a number of reasons: France is a developed market with clients that appreciate innovative solutions. Cocedal Conseil, our new partner in France is well respected in the marketing research space and their choice of eCommunity over other platforms is a significant win for the stage DigitalMR is in i.e. starting our Series A funding round.”

Carole Sasson - the founder and Managing Director of Cocedal - said: “Our Company as always is committed to be a pioneer and in the forefront of technological developments in the area of marketing research. The Beauty Community - using the DigitalMR platform for online qualitative research - is one more proof that we deliver on this commitment. This community in France is quite unique and is there to help companies in the beauty sector better connect and understand their consumers. I have no doubt that our decision to turn our panel into a community will provide a tremendous benefit to our clients.”